Lava Flow

I don't think there's a necessity for me to throw out the figures, percentages and charts etc here. It is right HERE around us that we would absorb in the most hard proven evidence. Ownership of mobile phones, PDAs, PCs, laptops, digital entertainment systems, MP3 players, cars, PDA Phone, digital cameras, digital camcorders, broadband connections, home and portable gaming stations, etc has been on the rise, perhaps in a exponential rate than ever before.

How many of us can be at ease for a day without our mobile phones and/or pdas? Or without internet connection, surfing the net and communicating on instant messengers? Or without any MP3 player, mobile phone, portable gaming station onboard our usual routine journeys to work and/or school? Or without any mobile phone, digital camera, digital camcorder during our year-end overseas vacations? Numerous surveys have indicated our growing and worrying dependency on these kinds of gadgets, especially the youths. I don't deny that of myself either.

Whenever my tuition students punch the numbers in their calculators or mobile phones, for the answers of simple sums like (60/3)+4 or (58+5-23), I would just shake my head and ask them whether it is possible for them to do it without the aid of the calculator. Whenever I ask someone for their home/mobile number, and they are "scratching" their heads and trying to give me the correct one, I smile to myself. Whenever I see a group of teenagers taking fun shots of one another from one funky/slim digital camera on the mrt or bus, I wonder have I ever done that before?

One of my very own principles is to always remember the fundamentals and basics. I still commit to my OWN memory my OWN mobile number, home number and those of my close friends and others which I frequently dial or any that would be of relevant importance. I still write down my phonebook list on paper. And I still carry a phonecard and some coins in my wallet. I still do my simple sums in mind or on paper most of the times, except when there's a need to use the functions in the calculator or the extensive spreadsheets on the PC. I still do most of my website design and related work in HTML. In fact, I'm typing all my blog entries in plain HTML format, right now and here. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) alike simply doesn't appeal to me much, I'm rather displeased with it at some stage and went straight on to HTML after that. For computer hardware, same thing applies again, most of the times, I would parition and format my harddisks in DOS. For photography, I make it a point to grasp the basics before attempting to move any further.

Of course, to adopt new technology is an extremely important aspect. But I would start with the very fundamentals and progress from there. It just simply amazes me when someone can assemble a computer from the hardware components and somehow gets stuck when he's installing the software. But to be fair, there have to be a START somewhere and somehow. But hopefully, the fundamentals of our society wouldn't be forgotten and lost decades or centuries from now.

To START is far better than to STUCK forever.